Fluoride:
Commie Plot or Capitalist Ploy

by
Joel Griffiths

From Covert Action Quarterly, Fall 1992, Number
42

PERCENT OF PUBLIC WATER SUPPLY
POPULATION USING FLUORIDATED WATER AND STATE RANKING

Cows crawled around the pasture on
their bellies, inching along like giant snails. So crippled by
bone disease they could not stand up, this was the only way they
could graze. Some died kneeling, after giving birth to stunted
calves. Others kept on crawling until, no longer able to chew
because their teeth had crumbled down to the nerves, they began
to starve....(1)
These were the cattle of the Mohawk Indians
on the New York-Canadian St. Regis Reservation during the period
1960-75, when industrial pollution devastated the herd and along
with it, the Mohawks' way of life. Crops and trees withered,
birds and bees fled from this remnant of land the Mohawk still
call Akwesasne, "the land where the partridge drums."
Today, nets cast into the St. Lawrence River by Mohawk fishers
bring up ulcerated fish with spinal deformities. Mohawk children,
too, have shown signs of damage to bones and teeth.(2)
In 1980, the Mohawks filed a $150 million
lawsuit for damage to themselves and their property against the
companies responsible for the pollution: the Reynolds Metals
Co. and the Aluminum Co. of America (ALCOA). But five years of
legal costs bankrupted the tribe and they settled for $650,000
in damages to their cows;(3) the court,
however, left the door open for a future Mohawk suit for damage
to their own health. After all, commented human rights lawyer
Robert Pritchard, " What judge wants to go down in history
as being the judge who approved the annihilation of the Indians
by fluoride emissions?"(4)

Many Akwesasnes
Fluoride emissions? Fluoride, as in toothpaste?
Well, yes. Fluoride was the pollutant
primarily responsible for the Akwesasne devastation.(5)
For nearly 50 years, the U.S. government
and media have been telling the public that fluoride is safe
and beneficialit is supposed to reduce cavities, especially
in children. Manufacturers add it to toothpaste, municipalities
put it in the public's drinking water. The only people who question
the safety of fluoride, says the government, are quacks and lunaticsparticularly
of the far-right-wing variety.
But fluoride has another side the government
never mentions. It is a toxic industrial pollutantone of
the oldest and biggest of them all. For decades, U.S. industrial
plants have rained heavy doses of waste fluoride on people, such
as the Mohawks. The nation, however, has been successfully conditioned
to think of fluoride solely as a benevolent substance and to
dismiss as a crackpot, anyone who claims otherwise.
In recent years, because of rampant environmental
damage, some of the worst fluoride pollution plants such as those
at Akwesasne have been forced to reduce their emissions, but
not terminate them. At Akwesasne, cows still live only half their
normal lifespan.(6) Nationwide, fluoride
remains one of industry's largest pollutants. By the Environmental
Protection Agency's (EPA) last estimate, at least 155,000 tons
a year were being released into the air by U.S. industrial plants.(7) Emissions into water lakes, rivers, and
ocean have been estimated to be as high as 500,000 tons a year.(8)
While people living near and/or working
in heavy fluoride-emitting industrial plants have received the
highest doses, the general population has not been spared either.
Fluoride is not biodegradable; whatever comes around stays around,
gradually accumulating in the environment, in the food chain,
and in people's bodies, where it settles in bones and teeth.
If this general increase in fluoride
dose were proved harmful to humans, the impact on industry which
pollutes both air and water would be major. The nation's air
is contaminated by fluoride emissions from the production of
iron, steel, aluminum, copper, lead and zinc; phosphates (essential
for the manufacture of all agricultural fertilizers); plastics;
gasoline; brick, cement, glass, ceramics, and the multitudinous
other products made from clay; electrical power generation and
all other coal combustion; and uranium processing.(9)
As for water, the leading industrial
fluoride polluters are the producers and processors of glass,
pesticides and fertilizers, steel and aluminum, chemicals, and
metals.(10) The metal processing industries
include copper and brass, as well as titanium, superalloys, and
refractory metals for military use.(11)
The list of polluters extends across
industry from basic to strategic. Industry and government have
long had a powerful motive for claiming an increased dose of
fluoride is safe for the population. Maintaining this position
has not been easy because, of industry's largest pollutants,
fluoride is by far the most toxic to vegetation, animals, and
humans.(12) In fact, it's one of the most
toxic substances known.(13)
"Airborne fluorides," reports
the U.S. Department of Agriculture, "have caused more worldwide
damage to domestic animals than any other air pollutant."(14) As for vegetation, as early as 1901, studies
"found that fluoride compounds are much more toxic than
the other compounds that are of significance in the industrial
smoke problem."(15)

Fluoride pollution has caused aquatic
damage of similar magnitude.(16) In other
words, there have been many Akwesasnes.
"Man [sic] is much more sensitive
than domestic animals to fluoride intoxication [the medical term
for poisoning]."(17)
Evidence that industrial fluoride has
been killing and crippling not only cows but human beings has
existed at least since the 1930s. The government has not only
dismissed the danger and left industry free to pollute, but it
has promoted the intentional addition of fluoride most of which
is recycled industrial waste to the nation's drinking water.
"It might be economically feasible
to reduce industrial fluoride emissions further," says Fred
L. Metz of the EPA's Office of Toxic Substances, "but eliminating
them would probably be impossible."(18)

Primal Poison Threatens industry
Of the highly toxic elements that are
naturally present throughout the earth's crustsuch as arsenic,
mercury, and leadfluoride is by far the largest in quantity.(19) Normally, only minute amounts of these
elements are found on the earth's surface, but Industry mines
its basic raw materials from deep in the earth and brings up
vast tonnagesnone in greater quantity than fluoride.
Historically, perhaps no other pollutant
has posed a greater threat to industrial expansion. As early
as 1850, fluoride emissions from the iron and copper industries
poisoned crops, livestock, and people. By the turn of the century,
consequent lawsuits and burdensome regulations threatened the
existence of these industries in Germany and England.(20)
They saved themselves by introducing the tall smokestacks which
reduced damage by dispersing the fluorides and other toxins into
the upper air.
In twentieth century America, however,
enormous industrial plants and new technologies increased fluoride
emissions so that even tall stacks could not prevent gross damage
for miles around. Following the period of explosive industrial
expansion known as "industry's roaring 20s," the magnitude
of industry's fluoride dilemma became starkly apparent.
International reports of fluoride damage
mushroomed in 1933 when the world's first major air pollution
disaster struck Belgium's Meuse Valley: several thousand people
became violently ill and 60 died. The cause was disputed, but
investigations by prominent scientists, including Kaj Roholm,
the world's leading authority on fluoride hazards, placed the
blame on fluoride.(21)

Pro-fluoride pamphlet, American
Assoc. of Public Health Dentistry.

Here and abroad, health scientists
were beginning to regard fluoride as a poison, pure and simple.
The trend toward its removal from the environment was potentially
disastrous from industry's point of view. "Only recently,
that is, within the last ten years, has the serious nature of
fluoride toxicity been realized," wrote Lloyd DeEds, senior
toxicologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in
1933. "It is a well-established fact that chronic intoxication
[poisoning] may manifest itself in man as recognized abnormalities
only after constant, or at least frequent, exposure over many
years....The possibility of fluoride hazard should...be recognized
in industry...where this element is discharged into the air as
an apparently worthless by-product."(22)
It was abundantly clear to both industry
and government that spectacular U.S. industrial expansionand
the economic and military power and vast profits it promisedwould
necessitate releasing millions of tons of waste fluoride into
the environment. Furthermore, two large new industries would
be adding to the dose: fluorocarbon chemicals (the aerosol propellants
and refrigerants now depleting the ozone layer) and aluminum,
slated for a crucial economic and military role during the upcoming
Second World War. By 1938 the aluminum industry, which then consisted
solely of ALCOA, had been placed on a wartime schedule. And fluoride
was the aluminum industry's most devastating pollutant.(23)
U.S. future industrial expansion, then,
would be accompanied by complaints and lawsuits over fluoride
damage on an unprecedented scalethe most threatening aspect
of which was harm to human health. Damage to animals and the
environment might be tolerated and easily paid off; if, however,
serious injury to people were established, lawsuits alone could
prove devastating to companies, while public outcry could force
industry-wide government regulations, billions in pollution-control
costs, and even mandatory changes in high-fluoride raw materials
and profitable technologies.

Liability Into Asset
This inter-war period saw the birth of
the military-industrial complex, with its concomitant public
disinformation campaigns. It also saw a federal blitz campaign
to convince the public fluoride was safe and good for them. The
kick-off was the 1939 announcement by ALCOA-funded scientist
Gerald J. Cox: "The present trend toward complete removal
of fluoride from water and food may need some reversal."(24)
New evidence of fluoride's safety began
emerging from research centers plied with industry's largess.
Notable among these was the University of Cincinnati's Kettering
Laboratory, whose specialty was investigating the hazards of
industrial chemicals. Funded largely by top fluoride-emitters
such as ALCOA, the Kettering Lab quickly dominated fluoride safety
research. A book by Kettering scientist and Reynolds Metals consultant
E.J. Largent, for example, written in part to "aid industry
in lawsuits arising from fluoride damage," became a basic
international reference work.(25)
The big news in Cox's announcement was
that this "apparently worthless by-product" had not
only been proved safe (in low doses), but actually beneficial:
it might reduce cavities in children. A proposal was in the air
to add fluoride to the entire nation's drinking water. While
the dose to each individual would be low, "fluoridation"
on a national scale would require the annual addition of hundreds
of thousands of tons of fluoride to the country's drinking water.
Government and industryespecially
ALCOAstrongly supported intentional water fluoridation.
Undoubtedly, most proponents were sincere in their belief that
the procedure was safe and beneficial. At the same time, it might
be noted that fluoridation made possible a master public relations
strokeone that could keep scientists and the public off
fluoride's case for years to come. If the leaders of dentistry,
medicine, and public health could be persuaded to endorse fluoride
in the public's drinking water, proclaiming to the nation that
there was a "wide margin of safety," how were they
going to turn around later and say industry's fluoride pollution
was dangerous?
As for the public, if fluoride could
be introduced as a health-enhancing substance that should
be added to the environment for the children's sake, those opposing
it would look like quacks and lunatics. The public would question
attempts to point out its toxicity or its unsavory industrial
connections.

ALCOA Foils Accountability
With such a powerful spin operating,
fluoride might become a virtually "protected pollutant,"
as writer Elise Jerard later termed it.(26) One
thing is certain, the name of the company with the biggest stake
in fluoride's safety was ALCOAwhose name is stamped all
over the early history of water fluoridation.
Throughout industry's "roaring 20s,"
the U.S. Public Health Service was under the jurisdiction of
Treasury Secretary Andrew W. Mellon, a founder and major stockholder
of ALCOA. In 1931, the year Mellon stepped down, a Public Health
Service dentist named H. Trendley Dean was dispatched to certain
remote towns in the West where drinking-water wells contained
high concentrations of natural fluoride from deep in the earth's
crust. Dean's mission was to determine how much fluoride people
could tolerate without obvious damage to their teetha matter
of considerable concern to ALCOA. Dean found that teeth in these
high-fluoride towns were often discolored and eroded, but he
also reported that they appeared to have fewer cavities than
average. He cautiously recommended further studies to determine
whether a lower level of fluoride in drinking water might reduce
cavities without simultaneously damaging bones and teeth, where
fluoride settles in humans and other animals.
Back at the Mellon Institute, ALCOA's
Pittsburgh industrial research lab, this news was galvanic. ALCOA-sponsored
biochemist Gerald J. Cox (27) immediately
fluoridated some lab rats in a study and concluded that fluoride
reduced cavities and that: "The case should be regarded
as proved."(28) In a historic moment
in 1939, the first public proposal that the U.S. should fluoridate
its water supplies was made not by a doctor, or dentist, but
by Cox, an industry scientist working for a company threatened
by fluoride damage claims.(29) Cox began
touring the country, stumping for fluoridation.
Initially, many doctors, dentists, and
scientists were cautious and skeptical, but then came World War
II, during which industry's fluoride pollution increased sharply
because of stepped-up production and the extensive use of ALCOA
aluminum in aircraft manufacture.
Following the war, as expected, hundreds
of fluoride damage suits were filed around the country against
producers of aluminum, iron and steel, phosphates, chemicals,
and other major polluters.(30) The cases
settled in court involved only damage to livestock or vegetation.

"Friends" of Children
Many others were settled out of court,
including those claiming damage to human health, thus avoiding
legal precedents. In one case, for the first time in the U.S.
an Oregon federal court found in Paul M. and Verla Martin
v. Reynolds Metals (1955) that the couple had sustained "serious
injury to their livers, kidneys and digestive functions"
from eating "farm produce contaminated by [fluoride] fumes"
from a nearby Reynolds aluminum plant.(31)
Soon thereafter, no less than the Aluminum Company of America
(ALCOA) and six other metals and chemical companies joined with
Reynolds as "friends of the court" to get the decision
reversed. According to a local paper, a Reynolds attorney "contended
that if allowed to stand, the verdict would become a ruling case,
making every aluminum and chemical plant liable to damage claims
simply by operating [emphasis added]."(32)
Despite extensive medical testimony for Reynolds from Kettering
Lab scientists, the Martins kept on winning. Finally, in a time-honored
corporate solution, Reynolds mooted the case by buying the Martins'
ranch for a hefty price.
The postwar casualties of industrial
fluoride pollution were manyfrom forests to livestock to
farmers to smog-stricken urban residentsbut they received
little more than local notice. National attention had been diverted
by fluoride's heavily publicized new image. In 1945, shortly
before the war's end, water fluoridation abruptly emerged with
the full force of the federal government behind it. In that year,
two Michigan cities were selected for an official "15-year"
comparison study to determine if fluoride could safely reduce
cavities in children, and fluoride was pumped into the drinking
water of Grand Rapids.

Nancy Shia

After limited animal and
human testing, the risks from fluoridation are cancer and bone
disease; the possible benefit is a pretty smile.

Other early experiments were performed,
not only without publicity, but without the knowledge of the
subjects. The scientific value of these experimentand their
ethicswere dubious in the extreme. In Massachusetts and
Connecticut, for example, the first fluoridation experiments
(1945-46) were conducted on indigent, mentally retarded children
at state-run schools. According to the 1954 congressional testimony
of Florence Birmingham, a trustee of the Wrentham (Massachusetts)
State School for Feebleminded Children, her school's administration
learned only by accident that fluoride was being put in the drinking
water.(33)
The trustees immediately voted to stop
the fluoridation, Birmingham testified, "but to my shocked
surprise, we were told by the [Massachusetts Department of Health]
that it was not an experiment and the fluoridation continued
on.... I found in the files a letter revealing that [a health
department representative] had come to the institution school
and in a conference with administration officials warned them
that there should be no publicity on the fluoride program there..."
The federally sanctioned experimenters
did not seem concerned that these children might accidentally
receive a toxic overdose of fluoride. "The method used in
putting fluoride in the water," said the president of the
school employees' union, "...is enough to cause panic at
the institution....A boy patient does it...He knows what it is
for he said, Come up with me and I can show you how I can take
care of you if I get mad at you.'"(34)
Meanwhile, in 1946, despite the fact
that the official 15-year experiment in Michigan had barely begun,
six more U.S. cities were allowed to fluoridate their water.
The fluoridation bandwagon had begun to roll.
At this juncture, Oscar R. Ewing, a long-time
ALCOA lawyer who had recently been named the company's chief
counsel with fees in the then-astronomical range of $750,000
a year (35) arrived in Washington.
Ewing was presumably well aware of ALCOA's fluoride litigation
problem. He had handled the company's negotiations with the government
for the building of its wartime plants.(36)
In 1947, Ewing was appointed head of
the Federal Security Agency (later HEW), a position that placed
him in charge of the Public Health Service (PHS). Under him,
a national water fluoridation campaign rapidly materialized,
spearheaded by the PHS. Over the next three years, 87 additional
cities were fluoridated including the control city in the original
two-city Michigan experiment, thus wiping out the most scientifically
objective test of safety and benefit before it was half over.

The Father of All Spin Doctors
The government's official reason for
this unscientific haste was "popular demand." And indeed,
these 87 cities had become so wild for fluoridation that the
government claimed it wasn't fair to deny them the benefits.
By then, in fact, much of the nation was clamoring for fluoridation.
This enthusiasm was not really surprising, considering Oscar
Ewing's public relations strategist for the water fluoridation
campaign was none other than Sigmund Freud's nephew Edward L.
Bernays,(37) "The Original Spin Doctor,"
as a Washington Post headline recently termed him.(38) Bernays, also known as the "father
of public relations," pioneered the application of his uncle's
theories to advertising and government propaganda. The government's
fluoridation campaign was one of his most stunning and enduring
successes.
In his 1928 book, Propaganda,
Bernays explained "the structure of the mechanism which
controls the public mind, and how it is manipulated by the special
pleader [i.e., public relations counsel] who seeks to create
public acceptance for a particular idea or commodity.....(39) Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism
of society constitute an invisible government which is the true
ruling power of our country...our minds are molded, our tastes
formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard
of...."
"If you can influence the [group]
leaders," wrote Bernays who had many confidential industrial
clients, "either with or without their conscious cooperation
[emphasis added], you automatically influence the group which
they sway..."(40)
Describing how, as PR man for the Beech-nut
Bacon Company, he influenced leaders of the medical profession
to promote sales, Bernays wrote, "The new salesman [would]
suggest to physicians to say publicly that it is wholesome to
eat bacon. He knows as a mathematical certainty that large numbers
of persons will follow the advice of their doctors because he
understands the psychological relationship of dependence of men
on their physicians."(41)
Substitute "dentists" for "physicians"
and "fluoride" for "bacon" and the similarities
are apparent. Almost overnight, under Bernays' mass mind-molding,
the popular image of fluoridewhich at the time was being
widely sold as rat and bug poisonbecame that of a beneficial
provider of gleaming smiles, absolutely safe, and good for children,
bestowed by a benevolent paternal government. Its opponents were
permanently engraved on the public mind as crackpots and right-wing
loonies.

Right-Wing Association
Fluoridation attracted opponents from
every point on the continuum of politics and sanity. The prospect
of the government mass-medicating the water supplies with a well-known
rat poison to prevent a non-lethal disease flipped the switches
of delusionals across the countryas well as generating
concern among responsible scientists, doctors, and citizens.
Moreover, by a fortuitous twist of circumstances,
fluoride's natural opponents on the left were alienated from
the rest of the opposition. Oscar Ewing, as Federal Security
Agency administrator, was a Truman "fair dealer" who
pushed many progressive programs such as nationalized medicine.
Fluoridation was lumped with his proposals. Inevitably, it was
attacked by conservatives as a manifestation of "creeping
socialism," while the left rallied to its support. Later
during the McCarthy era, the left was further alienated from
the opposition when extreme right-wing groups, including the
John Birch Society and the Ku Klux Klan, raved that fluoridation
was a plot by the Soviet Union and/or communists in the government
to poison America's brain cells.
It was a simple task for promoters, under
the guidance of the "original spin-doctor," to paint
all opponents as derangedand they played this angle to
the hilt. For example, one widely distributed dossier on opponents
"listed in alphabetical order reputable scientists, convicted
felons, food faddists, scientific organizations, and the Ku Klux
Klan."(42)
Actually, many of the strongest opponents
originally started out as proponents, but changed their minds
after a close look at the evidence. And many opponents came to
view fluoridation not as a communist plot, but simply as a capitalist-style
con job of epic proportions. Some could be termed early environmentalists,
such as the physicians George L. Waldbott and Frederick B. Exner,
who first documented government-industry complicity in hiding
the hazards of fluoride pollution from the public. Waldbott and
Exner risked their careers in a clash with fluoride defenders,
only to see their cause buried in toothpaste ads.
Exner's voluminous files were a source
of pivotal evidence in lawsuits decided against industry and
against fluoridation promoters. In 1978, following his death,
his files were destroyed in a mysterious fire.(43)
But all the opponents, credible and cracked
alike, were run over by the fluoridation bandwagon. In 1950 the
Public Health Service, along with leaders of dentistry, medicine,
and practically everything else, officially endorsed fluoridation,
and the transformation of fluoride's image was complete. Since
then, two-thirds of the nation's reservoirs have been fluoridated,
and about 143,000 tons of fluoride are pumped in yearly to keep
them that way.(44) Meanwhile, the government
continues to campaign for "universal fluoridation."
Which brings us to the last benefit to
industry from fluoridation: Companies forced to reduce their
emission can recoup some of the expense by selling the waste
to cities for water fluoridation. And most of the fluoride added
to drinking water has been recycled waste, particularly from
the fertilizer industry.(45)

Protected Pollutant
Since the 1950s, fluoride as industrial
toxin has remained largely unknown to the public, replaced by
fluoride as children's friend and creator of beautiful smiles.
The 1930s trend toward its removal from the environment has been
reversed with a vengeance. For example, in 1972 the newly formed
EPA did a survey of atmospheric fluoride polluters. It found
that five of the top six typically didn't bother to control their
fluoride emissions at all and weren't measuring emissions.(46) The most lax was the iron and steel industry,
which, according to the report, was also the biggest fluoride
emitter.(47) And why should these industries
worry, as regulatory agencies have maintainedever since
water fluoridationthat industrial fluoride emissions are
harmless to humans? As the EPA report stated: "The fluorides
currently emitted [by industry] may damage economic crops, farm
animals, and materials of decoration [i.e., flowers and
ornamental plants] and construction [i.e. buildings, statuary
and glass]...
"...[H]owever, the potential to
cause fluoride effects in man is negligible."(48)
Or, as another EPA report puts it, "It is clear that
fluoride emissions from primary aluminum plants have no significant
effect on human health. Fluoride emissions, however, do have
adverse effects on livestock and vegetation."(49)
In other words, the stuff withers plants, cripples cows, and
even eats holes in stone, but it doesn't hurt people. Nature
ever surprises.
When it comes to water pollution, of
course, industry has even less reason to fear conviction for
damage to human health. The government's fluoridation studies
have supposedly established beyond a doubt that hundreds of thousands
of tons of fluoride a year can be poured directly into the nation's
drinking water supplies with a "wide margin of safety"
for humans. So industrial fluoride emitters only have to worry
about the fish when they poison nearby bodies of water. The same
concentrations added to human drinking water for cavity prevention
can be fatal to freshwater fish.(50)

Polluted Science
When new scientific evidence threatens
fluoride's protected pollutant status, the government immediately
appoints a commission, typically composed of several veteran
fluoride defenders and no opponents; usually, these commissions
dismiss the new evidence and reaffirm the status quo. When one
didn't in 1983, the government simply altered the findings. It's
an instructive tale.
In 1983, the Public Health Service convened
a panel of "world-class experts" to conduct pro
forma review of safety data on fluoride in drinking water.
A panel transcript of the private deliberations revealed its
members discovering that much of the vaunted evidence of fluoride's
safety barely existed.(51) The 1983 panel
recommended caution, especially in regard to fluoride exposure
for children,(52) but its chair, Jay R.
Shapiro, then with the National Institutes of Health, was aware
that recommendations which conflicted with government fluoride
policy might run into trouble. In an attached memo, Shapiro remarked,
"[B]ecause the report deals with sensitive political issues
which may or may not be acceptable to the PHS [Public Health
Service], it runs the risk of being modified at a higher level...."(53)
Shapiro was prescient. When Surgeon General
Everett Koop's office released the official report a month later,
the panel's most important conclusions and recommendations had
been thrown out, apparently without consulting its members. "When
contacted," wrote Daniel Grossman, "...members of the
panel assembled by the Public Health Service expressed surprise
at their report's conclusions: They never received copies of
the finalalteredversion. EPA scientist Edward Ohanian,
who observed the panel's deliberations recalled being 'baffled'
when the agency received its report."(54)
All the government's alterations were
in one direction and any conclusion suggesting low doses of fluoride
might be harmful was thrown out. In its place, the government
substituted this blanket statement: "There exists no directly
applicable scientific documentation of adverse medical effects
at levels of fluoride below 8 ppm [parts per million]."(55)
This contradicted the panel's final draft,
which firmly recommended that "the fluoride content of drinking
water should be no greater than 1.4-2.4 ppm for children up to
and including age 9 because of a lack of information regarding
fluoride effect on the skeleton in children (to age 9), and potential
cardiotoxic effects [heart damage]..." All that, and more,
was tossed out by the government.(56)
To quote from the transcript of the panel's
meeting:
Dr. Wallach: "You would have to
have rocks in your head, in my opinion, to allow your child much
more than 2 ppm."
Dr. Rowe: "I think we all agree
on that."(57)
But in 1985, basing its action on the
altered report issued by Surgeon General Koop, EPA raised
the amount of fluoride allowed in drinking water from 2 to 4
ppm for children and everybody else

Bones of Contention
What are the effects of the decades-long
increase in fluoride exposure on the nation's health? The best
answer is, given the size and pervasiveness of the motive for
bias and the extreme politicization of science on this question,
no one knows. Recently, scientists have taken a new look, especially
at the most likely place to find fluoride damage: human bones,
where it accumulates. In the past two years, eight epidemiological
studies by apparently disinterested scientists have suggested
that water fluoridation may have increased the rate of bone fractures
in females and males of all ages across the U.S.(58)
The latest study published in the Journal of the American Medical
Association (JAMA) found that "low levels of fluoride may
increase the risk of hip fracture in the elderly."(59) These results, if correct, would also
implicate industrial fluoride pollution. Another group likely
to show damage from fluoride is young males. Since 1957, the
bone fracture rate among male children and adolescents has increased
sharply in the U.S. according to the National Center for Health
Statistics.(60) The U.S. hip fracture
rate is now the highest in the world, reports the National Research
Council.(61) "...Clearly," wrote
JAMA in an editorial, "it is now appropriate to revisit
the issue of water fluoridation."(62)
Fluoride and cancer, too, have been linked
by the government's own animal carcinogenicity test.(63)
Evidence that fluoride is a carcinogen has cropped up since at
least the 1940s, but the government has dismissed it all. A 1956
federal study found nearly twice as many bone defects (of a type
considered possibly pre-malignant) among young males in the fluoridated
city of Newburgh, New York, as compared with the unfluoridated
control city of Kingston; this finding, however, was considered
spurious and was not followed up.(64)
For a long time, the government avoided performing its official
animal carcinogenicity testwhich, if positive, would require
regulatory action against fluoride. It had to be pushed into
doing that.
In 1975, John Yiamouyiannis, a biochemist
and controversial fluoridation opponent, and Dean Burk, a retired
National Cancer Institute (NCI) official, reported a 5 to 10
percent increase in total cancer rates in U.S. cities which had
fluoridated their water supplies.(65)
Whether scientifically valid or not, the paper did trigger congressional
hearings in 1977, at which it was revealed, incredibly, that
the government had never cancer-tested fluoride. Congress ordered
the NCI to begin.
Twelve years later, in 1989, the study
was finally completed. It found "equivocal evidence"
that fluoride caused bone cancer in male rats.(66)
The NCI was immediately directed to examine cancer trends in
the U.S. population that might be fluoride-related. The NCI found
that nationwide evidence "...of a rising rate of bone and
joint cancer of all ages combined, due mainly to trends under
the age of 20, was seen in the 'fluoridated' counties but not
in the 'non-fluoridated' counties....The larger increase in males
under the age of 20 seen in the aggregate data for all bone and
joint cancers is seen only in the 'fluoridated' counties."(67)
The NCI also did more detailed studies
focused on several counties in Washington and Iowa. Once again,
"When restricted to percent under the age of 20, the rates
of bone and joint cancer in both sexes rose 47 percent from 1973-80
to 1981-87 in the fluoridated areas of Washington and Iowa and
declined 34 percent in the non-high fluoridated areas. For osteosarcomas
[bone cancers] in males under 20 [emphasis added], the
rate increased 70 percent in the fluoridated areas and decreased
four percent in the non-fluoridated areas."(68)
But after applying sophisticated statistical
tests, the NCI concluded that these findings, like those in Newburgh
in 1956, were spurious.
It was commission time again.
The new commission, chaired by venerable
fluoridation proponent and U.S. Public Health Service official
Frank E. Young, concluded in its final report that "...its
year-long investigation has found no evidence establishing an
association between fluoride and cancer in humans." As for
the evidence on bone fractures, the commission merely stated,
"further studies are required." And finally, as always:
"The U.S. Public Health Service should continue to support
optimal fluoridation of drinking water."(69)
"If fluoride presents any risks
to the public at the levels to which the vast majority of us
are exposed," intoned U.S. Assistant Secretary for Health,
James G. Mason, when releasing the report, "those risks
are so small that they have been impossible to detect. In contrast,
the benefits are great and easy to detect."(70)
That is, fewer cavities in children.

Government Doubts
There are signs, however, that 50 years
of official unanimity on this subject may be disintegrating.
Referring to the government's animal study, James Huff, a director
of the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences,
told a 1992 meeting he believes "that the reason these animals
got a few osteosarcomas [bone cancers] was because they were
given fluoride...Bone is the target organ for fluoride."
In other words, the findings were not "equivocal" but
solid.
"Perhaps we need to learn more about
this chemical," said Huff.(71) Others
feel more than enough has already been learned. William Marcus,
an EPA senior science adviser and toxicologist was indignant.
"In my opinion," he said, "fluoride is a carcinogen
by any standard we use. I believe EPA should act immediately
to protect the public, not just on the cancer data, but on the
evidence of bone fractures, arthritis, mutagenicity and other
effects." Marcus adds that a still-unreleased study by the
New Jersey State Health Department has found that the bone cancer
rate is six times higheramong young malesin fluoridated
communities.(72)
"The level of fluoride the government
allows the public is based on scientifically fraudulent information
and altered reports," charges Robert Carton, an EPA environmental
scientist and past president of its employee union, Local 2050,
National Federation of Federal Employees. The EPA union has been
campaigning for six years against what it terms the "politicization
of science" at the agency, citing fluoride as the archetypal
case. "People can be harmed simply by drinking the water,"
Carton warns.(73)
A subcommittee headed by Congressman
Ted Weiss (D-N.Y.) is investigating the government's handling
of the evidence on fluoride's safety. And there the matter restsuntil
the next commission.

Mega-con
Does fluoridation reduce cavities in
children? Almost everyone feels certain that it does, but only
because trusted authorities have told them so, and those authorities
in turn received their information from leaders who, as the original
spin-doctor noted, must be influenced if you want to make the
public believe something.
Actually, over the years, many health
professionalsespecially abroadhave decided the beneficial
effects of fluoride are mostly hokum; but open debate has been
stifled if not strangled. Repeatedly dentists and doctors who
were regarded as paragons of professional excellencewhen
they supported fluoridehave been vilified and professionally
ostracized after they changed their minds. During the early 1980s,
New Zealand's most prominent fluoridation advocate was John Colquhoun,
the country's chief dental officer. Then he decided to gather
some results. "I was an ardent fluoridationist, you see.
I wanted to show people how good it was..."
"When as chair of the Fluoridation
Promotion Committee, I gathered these statistics...I observed
that...the percentage of children who were free of dental decay
was higher in the unfluoridated part of most health districts
in New Zealand."(74) The national
health department refused to allow Colquhoun to publish these
findings, and he was encouraged to resign.
Now Colquhoun writes that "new evidence...suggests
that the harmful effects of water fluoridation are more real
than is generally admitted while the claimed dental benefit is
negligible."(75)
A more recent example is Canadian physician
Richard G. Foulkes, who is currently being accused by his former
colleague, Brent Friesen, chief medical officer of Calgary, AB.,
of "a classical case of manipulation of information and
selective use...to promote the quackery of anti-fluoridationists."
In 1973, as a special consultant to the
health minister of British Columbia, Foulkes had authored a report
recommending mandatory fluoridation for the province. But, after
reviewing the evidence, he has concluded that "fluoridation
of community water supplies can no longer be held to be safe
or effective in the reduction of tooth decay....Even in 1973,
we should have known this was a dangerous chemical."(76) He adds that "there is, also, a not-too-subtle
relationship between the objective [the promotion of fluoridation]
and the needs of major industries..."(77)
"I was conned," Foulkes thinks,
"by a powerful lobby."(78)

8. John Yiamouyiannis, Lifesaver's Guide
to Fluoridation (Delaware, Ohio: Safe Water Foundation, 1983),
p. 1; see also D. Rose and J.R. Marier, "Environmental Fluoride,"
National Research Council of Canada Publication Number NRCC 16081,
1977.

13. G.J. Cox, "New Knowledge of Fluorine
in Relation to Dental Caries," Journal of American Water
Works Association, Volume 31: 1926-30, 1939; see also standard
toxicology manuals. The terms "fluorine" and "fluoride"
were used interchangeably in early literature.

14. Air Pollutants Affecting the Performance
of Domestic Animals, U.S. Department of Agriculture Handbook
No. 380, August 1970, p. 41.

29. In his 1939 public address in Johnstown,
Pennsylvania, before any safety studies had been conducted, Cox
urged that city to fluoridate its water supplies immediately.
They turned him down. See Waldbott, op. cit., p. 304.

33. Hearings before the Committee on Interstate
and Foreign Commerce, U.S. House of Representatives, 83rd Congress,
Second Session on H.R. 2341, May 25-27, 1954, pp. 46-48.

34. Ibid. The accuracy of Birmingham's
testimony concerning the Wrentham school was confirmed by John
Small, Information Specialist, Fluorides and Health, National
Institute of Dental Research. Interview with author, 1992.

35. Birmingham testimony, op. cit., p.
51. Newspaper accounts from the period also refer to Ewing as
ALCOA's "chief counsel." Later ALCOA, responding to
charges that it had been behind the fluoridation scheme, claimed
that Ewing was an extremely wealthy corporate lawyer and that
his major client was ALCOA.

36. Time, "Aluminum," November
10, 1941.

37. Birmingham testimony, op. cit.
Confirmed by Bernays, at age 100, in a 1991 interview with author.

44. Letter to author from American Water Works
Association, Denver Colorado, public information department,
1991.

45. A 1983 letter from an EPA administrator
describes the system: "In regard to the use of fluosilicic
acid as a source of fluoride for fluoridation, this agency regards
such use as an ideal environmental solution to a long-standing
problem. By recovering by-product fluosilicic acid from phosphate
fertilizer manufacturing, water and air pollution are minimized,
and water utilities have a low cost source of fluoride available
to them...." (Rebecca Hammer, EPA Deputy assistant administrator
for water, March 30, 1983.)

58. Cooper, et al., Journal of the American
Medical Association, Vol. 266, July 24, 1991, pp. 513-14.
See also Sowers, et al., "A Prospective Study of
Bone Mineral Content and Fractures in Communities with Different
Fluoride Exposure," American Journal of Epidemiology,
Vol. 133, No. 7, pp. 649-60. For a summary of the most recent
studies and a review of the scientific debate, see "Summary
of Workshop on Drinking Water Fluoride Influence on Hip Fracture
and Bone Health," Osteoporosis International, Vol.
2, 1992, p. 109-17.

61. U.S. National Research Council, Diet
and Health (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1989),
p. 121.

62. JAMA, "Hip...," op cit.

63. Not just anything causes cancer in the
government tests. The majority of substances testedall
suspected carcinogensprove negative, according to the National
Cancer Institute. And there's good reason to worry about the
few, like asbestos and DES, that do prove positive, says the
NCI brochure, March 1990.

64. U.S. National Research Council, Drinking
Water and Health, (Washington, D.C.: National Academy of
Sciences, 1977), pp. 388-89.

65. John Yiamouyiannis and Dean Berk, "Fluoridation
of Public Water Systems and Cancer Death Rates in Humans,"
presented at the 67th annual meeting of the American Society
of Biological Chemists, and published in Fluoride, Volume
10, Number 3, 1977, pp. 102-23. Follow-up studies were conducted
here and abroad which claimed to refute this paper and it remains
controversial.

66. U.S. Public Health Service, Review
of Fluoride Benefits and Risks (Washington, D.C.: Department
of Health and Human Services, February 1991), p. iii.